Splash! You are in Costa Rica's Blue Eco Blog. Echoing Eco for Oceans and Waters. Giving voice to dolphins and whales, their waves and their waters, and all denizens of the deep. News they think you should use. Dive in.

Avivando delfines. Dolphin Stoking. How to meet, greet and stoke a dolphin megapod. People and Dolphins come together in the big blue offshore Osa peninsula, Costa RIca. Offshore Osa is the only place where this kind of thing is known and these dolphins need protection from nets and lines and hooks. Right?

Why is it called a dolphin orgy? See in this video from offshore Osa peninsula, Costa RIca. These dolphins need an area free of nets and lines to continue to mix their genes and grow culture. Osa may be the biggest dolphin orgy spot in the world. Let the dolphin festival swim on, no canned tuna, no shrimp, protect dolphin waters from the nets and lines that crash their party every day. Only Offshore Osa

What
happens when you sing underwater to wild dolphins? They sing back.
Listen to this wild spinner dolphin swim over and repeat the muscial
call of Shawn Larkin as they swim together in the blue water pelagic
of the open ocean of Osa, Costa Rica. This is true communication
with dolphins. Wild dolphins do not speak English or Spanish or
Russian, they speak music. This is close encounters of the third
kind right here on earth, wild dolphin musical communication.
Songwriting with dolphins.

These
dolphins that write songs with humans are under attack from nets and
lines. Unlike Paul Watson, Costa Ricans really have given our own
dolphins the death sentence. While everyone should be outraged at
the injustice of hunting sea mammals like Paul Watson for defending
his own, do all the Sea-lebrites care about the dolphins and whales
that the Captain fights for? Time to free Paul Watson and make a
Pelagic Park, only then can Costa Rica begin to attone for our
oceanic sins. Our dolphins need a pelagic park here in Costa Rica
before it is too late.

The dolphins have spoken again. This time, after we had the most amazing encounter EVER, a group swam right over to us and said:

"When top down does not work you go bottom up.”

After lengthy and deep thought and a swim we think we know what they mean.

Waiting for politicians and ministers to help the dolphins is proving rather slow and there is not much time for this tribe that is losing members to the tuna dozers on a regular basis.

So it time to take it to da people.

Calling all sport fishers, dive shops, cruise boats, hotels and so on and so forth.

Stop letting places serve tuna and shrimp with no shame.

If you are a sport fisher type in Costa Rica and you give your money to a place that serves canned tuna or shrimp you are terminating your own sport. The same goes for divers who like to see marine life. And anyone who likes to travel on the water or considers themselves eco tourists.

If a place serves tuna or shrimp during your Costa Rica travels call them out.

When you call about bookings ask.

Is cheap tuna and shrimp really so important to Costa Rica's eco businesses?

Some years here off the Osa peninsula and Drake Bay it seems pretty easy to be a humpback whale male, sing some songs, watch the ladies dance in the air, be a whale. Those are the years when there seem to be more females denizens than male.

Not this year.

This is one of the other years. Where there are more males than females.

A group of up to 9 boisterous and apparently amorous humpback males have been fighting over one particular female whale. We are guessing she is quite fetching.

The fight has been going on for at least 12 days. And you thought twelve rounds was tough?

I think we all know that whales like to do things big and their combat is the same.

How do they fight you ask?

There is a famous line in a movie called Ben Hur;

“Ramming Speed!”

That´s just how they roll. Get up speed and slam into the other guy.

They also smack each other with their fins.

Think of really big birds boxing with their wings and tail.

The gentle giants have battered a boat full of tourists and a foolish captian who did not know that he should forget about the 100 or 200 meter rule during a fight.

You better stay like a kilometer away during a humpback whale fight.

Sadly, just like they forget about boats during fights they also swim right into long lines and get hopelessly tangled..

To bad Costa Rica allows long lines between Corcovado National Park and Caño Island Biological Reserve, we should just let the whales fight in peace.

The translation of what the whales were saying will not be repeated here.

The same false killer whales tribe that has been visiting the Osa coast north of Corcovado to Drake Bay for many years is back again in action. These giant dolphins are better called Pseudorca, the genus in science speak, because there is nothing false about them.

They are among the coolest creatures you will ever meet on this planet or any other. They are the biggest thing that acts like a dolphin. Sure whales and orcas leap and splash but the pseudorcas do things like head first reentries and play touch tag in the air with each other. The big whales and orcas and pilot whales do not do such acrobatics. Pseudorca are also the most fearless of all Cetaceans, whales and dolphins, in Costa Rica. They have no problem getting right in your face. If they do you will not forget it.

The pseudies are here in Drake Bay again this week and they are up to the same old antics. Eating big eyed jack at Caño Island Biological Reserve. Raising newborn young. Corralling rooster fish in teams along the coast of Caletas. Chowing tuna sashimi in the blue water pelagic. Surfing the waves from boats with fever. And passing around fish like a football during a game.

These dudes are also navigating a bunch of nets and long lines legally strewn between Caño and Corcovado National Park. You would think that we would protect everything in between these these two economic and biodiversity gems. Costa Rica only protects an absolutely miniscule ring around these teeny tiny marine protected areas. And there is no plan to close the gap. The extreme athlete giant Tico dolphins can swim through these little places in half an hour, or less.

I know, I know, you´re like, what? In Costa Rica's most biodiverse park there is only 500 meters of ocean from the beach protected? The same park with the most wild coastline in Costa Rica, you might see long liners 600 meters off the beach?

Sorry. Yes. For real. Word.

And even though we just got a boatload of money to make marine protected areas, the new ones are so small they barely show up on the map.

OK. There are two exceptions. The Golfo Dulce and Cocos Island National Park actually do protect some serious areas. But that's it.

Like the Golfo and Cocos, the area offshore of the Osa and Caño is unique in world. Plus it is the most important area in all of Costa Rica for whales and dolphins. They are found here in a diversity and quantity found nowhere else. And the tuna nets and the long lines and the trawlers are killing it. Help.

Newsplash- Thank you for waiting. It appears apparently perhaps that a very old and wise dolphin swam over and said to Blue Eco Blog, we think:

“We feel deeply for the tragedy that has befallen Costa Rica´s land dwellers due the profuse and extended rains. The oceans tribes too suffer greatly from untold and incomprehensible toxins and pollutions washed to sea quickly by these great rains. We must all work together to recover.”

An alternative translation of the whistles and click of the communicative dolphin follows:

“Return to this spot at the same time tomorrow with all the wasabi you can bring then later stop changing the climate.”